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Zhaoxin KaiXian x86 CPU Tested
- 11thEarlOfMar 6y agoWould be interested to know what design software they use for these chips.
- mhh__ 6y agoIn general, I'm very curious what a modern EDA flow looks like for an Intel or AMD - of those two AMD are apparently much better at automating their designs. I'm guessing not much of the HDL is ever actually touched by a human any more (i.e. generated from a specification by some in house program).
- colejohnson66 6y agoTools like nMigen do exist where you write a Python program that generates the Verilog for you. You can also run formal verification on it. I’m sure Intel and AMD have their own in house software systems.
- beervirus 6y agoSlow as molasses, power hungry, and almost certainly backdoored by the CCP. No thank you.
- eloff 6y agoThere's no way to trust Chinese hardware or software thanks to the lack of freedom in China for both individuals and companies. But the domestic market there is huge, as is the global market that doesn't care about security from Chinese state hackers. Apple's CPU wasn't that interesting at the start either, it's early days yet.
- disown 6y agoPretty much everyone tech component is manufactured in china... Also "CCP" gives you away. Should be more sneaky about it rather than being so up front.
- ur-whale 6y ago>and almost certainly backdoored by the CCP. No thank you. Not that I disagree with you, but to be fair, there's no way to tell any modern CPU that's in your computer hasn't been backdoored. Intel CPU's most certainly do not have a glowing reputation in that department.
- garmaine 6y agoBackdoored by whom is an important real-world distinction.
- cesarb 6y ago> Backdoored by whom is an important real-world distinction. Not really. Once something is backdoored by X, it can be accessed not only by X, but also by anyone who managed to hack into X. This is one of the main objections against adding backdoors (no matter how they are named, a backdoor doesn't stop being a backdoor just because you named it a "front door") to cryptographic protocols; even if you try to somehow make it so only "good guys" can use the backdoor, the "good guys" can be compromised (through technical or social means) by the "bad guys". As an example, many telephony systems around the world have backdoors meant to be used only by local police. In a well-known case in Europe (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_wiretapping_case_2004%E2%80%9305 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_wiretapping_case_2004%E2...), these backdoors were exploited by agents of a foreign country.
- garmaine 6y agoI would rather have a device with zero back doors, obviously. But given that my present choice can only be between devices that are backdoored by the intelligence services of democratic nations with strong rule of law, or authoritarian regimes, and there is no third option, the choice is clear.
- seniorivn 6y agoif you are a regular person of no interest for politicians, your been choice is a backdoor from the least influential agency so if you are Chinese you better stick with American security, if you are American you might consider chinese/Russian security etc
- drzaiusapelord 6y agoI wonder if Windows ARM will be so mature that by the time these groups get x86 parity with Intel, it won't matter outside of specialized high-performance applications like gaming because we'll be migrating to ARM by then anyway.
- faitswulff 6y agoOther than Apple silicon, is there any other competitive ARM desktop processor? If not, and if, as the article states, the Chinese government is funding a 100% domestic silicon stack by 2022, then Zhaoxin might be competitive sooner rather than later.
- k_sze 6y agoI’m thinking Microsoft’s SQ2 or other Qualcomm chips might end up in a laptop first (Surface Pro X doesn’t count as a proper laptop), then desktop soon after. (Complete speculation though)
- djsumdog 6y agoI'm really afraid of Linux getting left behind in the dust. It will be interesting to see if we will get RISC-V devices that can stay competitive with Apple's proprietary ARM based chips.
- mhh__ 6y ago> It will be interesting to see if we will get RISC-V devices that can stay competitive with Apple's proprietary ARM based chips. Just to really make this obvious in case of any misunderstanding: RISC-V is an open ISA. You are free to use the instruction set. A microarchitecture implementing the RISC-V ISA can be just as proprietary as the developers please.
- solarkraft 6y agoBut Linux has been working perfectly on ARM for many years (decades at this point?). We just need general purpose computing to stay alive (and it's not actually being killed with the M1 yet). RISC-V doesn't make much of a difference here. You can still build highly locked-down proprietary systems using it.
- mandelken 6y ago(This is from April 2020 -> could use (2020) in the title)
- zaroth 6y agoToo soon!
- userbinator 6y agoWhat's the equivalent level of performance in terms of AMD/Intel CPUs? Sandy Bridge or thereabouts? Because for the past few years, PCs have basically been "fast enough" for most things, super-inefficient monstrosities like Electron excluded. In fact my "daily driver" is probably slower than this Chinese CPU. Incidentally, there is an interesting and active market in Chinese motherboards with X79/X99 chipsets, which are from that era, along with used Xeons and such. Obviously those who place performance above all else will not be buying these.
- mhh__ 6y agoSeems to be roughly in line with https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/129945/intel-pentium-gold-g5600-processor-4m-cache-3-90-ghz.html https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/129945/... in some benchmarks as per the article Some Reddit searching suggests a geekbench score comparable with a FX-8100 It's also worth saying that these comparisons can be overly favourable as (from the architectural design perspective) you can effectively get some performance for free from the roughly 4 process doublings in between this and the Bulldozer.
- sudosysgen 6y agoOnly one process doubling. This is 16nm and Bulldozer was 32nm. Its obviously still quite a bit behind architecturally, though.
- mhh__ 6y agoDensity has gone from about 7.5 on GF to 28 on TSMC if I read correctly.
- sudosysgen 6y agoAh, so around 1.9 doublings. Seems like I was wrong :)
- mkup 6y agoThis article mentions Windows 10 China Government Edition: Windows 10 China Government Edition that is designed to meet the country's security and privacy standards (Microsoft basically stripped out all of its spyware for this special version of Windows for the Chinese government, and we don't have access to a copy). Did anyone here heard more about it?
- webmobdev 6y agoApparently it's an 'Enterprise' edition available only for the Chinese government - https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-windows_install-winpc/how-to-download-windows-10-china-government/b743f48f-4755-45bf-bcdf-c7cf6c719894 https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10... It's funny that the Chinese, who have created a vast network of online and offline spywares, gets to have a Windows stripped of all spyware! Shows how much Microsofts cares about us ordinary users.
- zinekeller 6y ago> It's funny that the Chinese, who have created a vast network of online and offline spywares, gets to have a Windows stripped of all spyware! Shows how much Microsofts cares about us ordinary users. Your point is correct consumer-wise, but saying that only the Chinese Government benefits from this is misleading. It is certainly possible to disable every telemetry - if you use the enterprise version. (By the way, Windows 10 Home China is also like Windiws 10 Home - except that telemetry is stored domestically in China rather than transmitted to US.)
- webmobdev 6y ago> but saying that only the Chinese Government benefits from this is misleading. No, the Chinese version has all the telemetry code removed. There's nothing to turn off, unlike in the Enterprise edition.
- Scoundreller 6y ago> Windiws 10 Home I had to do a search to see if that was a knockoff or just your typo! (It's a typo)
- branon 6y agoInteresting. Makes me want to get my hands on one. Feasible for a hobbyist or no? Tried searching on eBay but didn't get many results.
- qwerty456127 6y agoSeems yet another return of Cyrix, this time under a communist flag.
- rasz 6y agoCentaur.
- xony 6y agoAtleast someone is checking Intel's monopoly. thank you china
- yjftsjthsd-h 6y agoSurely AMD or non-x86 is in a far better position to check Intel's position? Given that they're shipping something today that's a match for current-gen Intel...
- xony 6y agono cares US's patent troll crp , We are waiting for chinese chip to be sold in outside china
- djsumdog 6y agoIf it's build on the VIA intellectual property, VIA bought Cyrix and have access to some of the licensing around x86. It will be interesting to see if they try to push these in the US and if they're legally allowed to. (They probably are).
- mhh__ 6y agoUnless they were somehow subsidized by the Chinese government I don't understand what market there would be for a slow, undocumented, probably buggy, power-hungry chip like this
- hyperman1 6y agoDo not underestimate the power of the word 'cheap', especially in the enterprise where some division buys the hardware for the other divisions and is only reviewed on cost.
- xony 6y agoThey are able to match the performance of i5 , woooow
- neogodless 6y agoOn Page 1, there's a chart comparing low resolution gaming to a Core i5, and the Zhaoxin chips are running DoTA at just 20% the framerate of the Core i5 integrated chips. On Page 2, the Zhaoxin KX-U6780A is compared to a Core i3 and Ryzen 3, and underperforms both of them. On the Page 3 gaming benchmarks, it often performs around AMD A10-9700[0]. The one place is does seem reasonably competitive with a 7th gen Core i5-7400 is in the 7-zip compression benchmark on Page 4, where the eight cores are put to use against a four core Intel chip that doesn't have hyperthreading enabled. [0] https://www.amd.com/en/products/apu/7th-gen-a10-9700-apu https://www.amd.com/en/products/apu/7th-gen-a10-9700-apu [1] https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/97147/intel-core-i5-7400-processor-6m-cache-up-to-3-50-ghz.html https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/97147/i...
- blackrock 6y agoMeh. My opinion is that they (China) should abandon this approach. This was planned back in the early 2010s, before the rise of Trump and MAGA. The reality and situation on the ground has changed. Now, the powers that be of America, is pursuing persecution and containment of all Chinese advancements in technology. China should abandon Intel x86 and all software from Microsoft. In fact, they should ban it and make it illegal to use. They should instead focus on Huawei’s new Harmony OS and a new RISC-V processor instruction set architecture. They must also abandon ARM, since that’s under western control, and nVidia is trying to acquire it, which means it’ll also be under American control. America played its card. They are willing to use sanctions for everything. The only way for China to counter, is to not play America’s game. And instead, to make their own game. The benefit to this is multipronged. It allows domestic manufacturers to build expertise in software and hardware systems for operating systems, databases, application software, and hardware components. But first, they must crack the photolithography barrier, and build a domestic competitor to ASML. For Americans, you don’t have to worry about using Chinese technology, since you’re not the target market for this. You can’t anyways, since Huawei has been banned in America. So you don’t have to worry about China mysteriously spying on your Facebook posts (as if you’re really that important to them anyways).
- ai_ja_nai 6y agoIs this of any relevance, given the first stabs of Apple and AWS at pivoting respectively desktop (m1) and server (Graviton) markets toward ARM?